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Justice Stevens and the Second Amendment

A few days ago, retired Justice John Paul Stevens published an op-ed over at WaPo promoting his new book coming out later this month. The hook for his piece was an explanation of how to fix the Second Amendment so that it will mean what he wishes it meant. I’ve been puzzling over how to comment on his essay, but a couple of other bloggers have beat me to the punch.

8 thoughts on “Justice Stevens and the Second Amendment”

I actually got a review copy of the book, hoping to be able to write something nice about it. After all, Stevens’ memoir about working at the court under five different chief justices (as a law clerk, lawyer, and associate justice) was quite compelling. Sadly, I only found a single worthwhile amendment in the bunch — leading me to give my review ( http://rhymeswithright.mu.nu/archives/348337.php ) the title “Retired Justice John Paul Stevens Proposes A Good Constitutional Amendment — And Five Stinkers”.

It is amazing how out of touch 1%ers like JP Stevens are. He had armed guards protecting him his entire career and now he wants to outlaw a basic means of self defense for everyone who doesn’t have a seven figure bank account. Total hypocrite.

I think he wants to believe that if guns are outlawed, no one, including the outlaws, will have guns. He is of course forgetting how well that has worked in the past, and that, even if guns become impossible to get, outlaw types will just find another weapon. After essentially banning all handguns, Britain has seen a massive increase in knife crime, to the point that they have some fairly draconian laws on knives right now, and have talked about banning knives in such a way that it would be almost impossible to get a set of cooking knives. I think the idea was that you would have to purchase them, and than have a licensed delivery service bring them to your house.

The five words added to the Second Amendment destroy the rights it protects, but they do not make it match his argument in the Heller dissent since they say nothing about protecting state militia power.

There is a current series of posts at On Second Opinion Blog documenting the historical errors in Justice Stevens’ Heller dissent. Since Stevens completely misunderstands the founders’ period usage, he constantly quotes period evidence that directly contradicts his argument rather than supporting it. For those who want documentation regarding such points, the evidence is there for the looking.

The initial post in the series is titled Justice Stevens’ Train Wreck of American History. Part 6, entitled Justice Stevens’ Mangled Beyond Recognition American History, will be published within a few days.